Saturday, March 22, 2008

Sittin' On My TV Tuffet

From a 1955 Osco Drug ad; I'm still of an age where "drug store" meant "cheap department store," not "pharmacy and nothing else." You went to the drug store to buy comics, tap on the goldfish tanks, talk Mom into a pack of fake money and a squirt gun (because the allowance was being saved for comics, of course), oh, and Mom might need to find aspirin, band-aids, and nylons. Anyhow, this ad informs us that the drug store had an ample supply of this amazing piece of furniture: Tough, Rugged, Covered With Washable Plastic -- The TV Tuffet from Meljax!These high-grade pieces of furniture came in numerous fashion colors that matched any decor: red, blue, yellow, and green. And you could get one of three different images silkscreened on the back: a cowboy, a Raggedy Ann, and a poorly-balanced elephant. As any parent of multiple children knows, these options aren't just for aesthetic purposes: the possibility of 12 combinations of color and picture means you're unlikely to buy identical chairs for any of your kids. If you've got two girls and a boy, you get a red Raggedy Ann, a blue Raggedy Ann, and a green Cowboy; simple as pie! And, in the fifties, you were willing to accept that the plastic was going to crack and split within a couple days of the chairs getting home, but the kids got used to the duct tape on their high chair, they can deal with duct tape on their tuffet. It was almost half-price even, marked down to $2.99 from $5.95.

Most amazing, and appropriate to the time, were the multiple uses of the tuffet -- you could, of course, watch TV, but it could also be used as a booster chair at the dinner table and in the car. Yes, look at that smiley kid at the bottom, relaxing seatbeltless with his hands behind his head, nary a care in the world -- you know, that care-free look you had shortly before you awaken to find teeth marks in the vinyl dashboard, blood seeping from one nostril, and a throbbing headache. Ah, the fifties were a wonderful time for children!